Are We Willing to Admit That We Need Parents?

On the dishonesty of the Birth Rate Debate.

A few months ago, I wrote a piece for The Atlantic pushing back on the notion that declining fertility has little to do with economics and everything to do with culture. In that piece, I argue that while correcting the financial disincentives to have children may not be sufficient to boost fertility, it is likely necessary. Culture and economics, as one researcher told me, are sort of like “two blades in a pair of scissors.” Each blade needs the other to cut something. If the goal is to raise the birth rate, we ignore the economic component at our peril.

Today, I’ve got a piece up at The Dispatch that focuses on the cultural blade of the Birth Rate Debate. In it, I tackle the pervasive tendency to deny or downplay the real reason declining fertility is an issue: that society needs parents and cannot function without them. Let me explain!

Me when someone tells me pronatalism is just about making sure women get the baby cuddles their nervous systems require to achieve happiness.

I’ve been reporting on the Great Baby Bust for a few years now. In that time, I’ve become accustomed to a certain caginess on the topic. Many people outright deny that low fertility is a problem at all. But even those who acknowledge that it merits attention often try to reframe the problem in what I would consider a really insincere manner. Some will claim that, actually, the problem is our economy, which relies on continued growth, or a pension system that relies on a continually replenished pool of workers to fund it. We should change our economy, the argument goes, rather than trying to boost the birth rate that sustains it. Others try to argue that, actually, the problem is that people are having fewer kids than they’d like—and so we should really just focus on closing that gap.

One reason I’m fascinated by this line of thinking is that many pronatalists are as guilty of it as anyone else. They seem, on the one hand, perfectly well aware that low fertility is a problem for society, but then when it comes to reversing it, act like it is simply a problem for individuals. That various obstacles stand between people and their optimal quota of baby cuddles. Or, more subtly, that people just don’t quite understand how integral baby cuddles are to their happiness. Parenthood has a “PR crisis” because Jessica Grose wrote a scawwy book about it, and as a result, young people have been bamboozled into making decisions against their own interest. In other words, instead of saying “hey, society really needs parents, how do we improve the terms of the gig so that more people take up the role?” they say “hey, society really needs parents, but let's ignore that and instead try to make sure individuals understand that they personally need kids and will be miserable without them.” It turns the pronatalist effort into this wishy washy “hey I’m just looking out for you” crap. Blech. Just admit you need me, fam!

Whatever strain of this you are engaging in, it amounts to what I consider an entirely disingenuous and ultimately counterproductive approach to pronatalism. The primary reason that low birth rates are a matter of concern is that it is not possible for society to continue to function unless people raise children. This is not some byproduct of capitalism or the symptom of a growth-dependent economy. It is the reality of human existence and always has been. Raising people to continually replenish the ever-aging and dying pool of workers in a given society has always been a major reason for child rearing. At the individual level, it is far, far less pressing to raise kids of one’s own now than it was for most of human history. But society as a whole is no (or…not much) less reliant on continued reproduction than it’s ever been.

Ignoring this by pretending that we’re all just looking out for the happiness of individuals who don’t realize all the joy they are missing out on by forgoing parenthood is not only dishonest, but actually undermines the pronatalist cause. For one thing, it is destined to backfire (read the piece to understand why). But perhaps more importantly, pretending that all of this panic about birth rates is really just about ensuring that individuals get the babies they knowingly or unknowingly crave effectively trivializes the work of parenthood in a manner that makes it less appealing. It’s about as patronizing as pretending that the reason we need soldiers to enlist is so that young men can get the thrill of holding a gun. Here’s a little snippet from the piece:

“To pretend that it ultimately doesn’t matter how many kids people have as long as they have the number they want is to rob parents of a source of satisfaction common to many other types of work: the knowledge that they are contributing meaningfully to society. It is as absurd as attempting to recruit people to the army while pretending that it doesn’t matter if anyone signs up. If anyone really believed that the world would carry on just fine without doctors, or nurses, or firemen, fewer people would take up those roles, not because there is no personal satisfaction to be gleaned from them, but because that satisfaction is often linked to the purpose they serve in society.”

Anyway, if any of this is making you uncomfortable, well, that tracks. As I write in the piece, fertility talk makes people uncomfortable. If there are questions or objections popping up in your mind as you read this, give the full essay a read: it’s likely that I addressed them. And then let me know what you think!